I bought Java A Beginner's Guide (Fifth Edition)

Hi all,
So today I was in the city and this time around compared to last time I was there Dymocks was still open. So I went in-store and straight away after asking the shop-assistant whether they had any books on Programming was delitefully answered with yes they did and they took me to where they were.
Although they didn't have a lot in the way of Beginners books except for the For Dummies range which I wasn't really interested in...Considering I had downloaded there Hacking one a while back or well i think it was that and it was rather useless and was more about preventing Hacking -.-...
Anyway I did find a couple that were of interest but the one that I found most interesting was a rather large book for Beginners although it may have been the only one there for Beginners that wasn't in the For Dummies range...This book being Java A Beginner's Guide, Fifth Edition, by Herbert Schildt and published and printed by Oracle Press.. So far it seems pretty good and seems to cover so much, including history and little Q&A questions here and there related to the text you were just reading. It also states this book is for people who have no prior programming knowledge which was exactly what I was after.
Oh and the only problem I had was on the way back from the city I got this tiny dot of coke on the edge of my book planning on looking up to see if there is a way to remove liquid stains off paper =\ I find the fact I know I did it and I know it is there somewhat irritating even though I'm already past the first what ten pages the dot was visible on.
So did I make the right choice going for Java and for this particular book?
Thanks for any replies.
EDIT: Might as well toss in there I payyed a little less then $50 for it and was surprised just to find a store for once that sold Programming related books was surprised just how extensive a range Dymocks in Rundle Mall is (...Now I mention where I was haha...Can't imagine anything bad coming of it that I really care about now...Although I had some paranoid thoughts about the fact you could ask for details pretending to be the person who bought that book in that store and ask for credit card details although I see that highly unlikely they would give them to you =P) I've checked multiple book stores closer to my place and they never have anything and recently with Angus & Robertson closing shop I was never really able to check there and from what I can remember the one near me didn't have anything anyway. The only place I've seen with a huge amount of books on Programming, Computer Sciences and Artificial Intelligence are University books stores so they are proper textbooks for University courses which aren't cheap. Good thing is now I know that I could do that later because I have a friend of my step-dad's who is a University lecturer so =D might be able to get them cheaper, when I'm after some other books and am after a particular thing...

Edited by TheSingularity, 19 February 2012 - 06:49 PM.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. - Salvor Hardin, Foundation Series, Isaac Asimov

"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. - Mark Twain

An open mind is willing to consider new ideas, while provisionally accepting those backed by empirical evidence, and provisionally rejecting those without.

No yourself. Reference docs are a given, and watching a professional lecturer is a lot easier for a beginner than a static webpage.

"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. - Mark Twain

An open mind is willing to consider new ideas, while provisionally accepting those backed by empirical evidence, and provisionally rejecting those without.

No yourself. Reference docs are a given, and watching a professional lecturer is a lot easier for a beginner than a static webpage.

To get a background of it before hitting the keyboard for a moment certainly , but in no way will ever replace learning it.

I still disagree, gods own stuff is the tops, i came in out of the rain and sat down in 1999 and saw borlands paper about java2 then found it came from Sun originally and looked up their docs on their site, there tutorials are far superior so never shirk theirs anyhow , Stanford can only be considered a supplement (extra / add on) , not an alternative, certainly use it but it won't beat bozzz(Oracle Sun) at it, neither the "Tech Tips" section for learning java.
They(Oracle - Sun) are just simply good stuff , IBM is also good stuff but it's better when you are starting to move into frameworks and ADT systems.

I also forgot to mention, the other set of docs required are the Core J2SE API docsthis is the J2SE 7 docs API online http://docs.oracle.c.../api/index.html
go to the J2SE page and download a set for yourself too.

I have been teaching myself java with this book which i find is great. Java, how to program. Ninth edition. Fantastic book. Well paced and covers the topics well. Great examples and it gets you started from the get go.

No yourself. Reference docs are a given, and watching a professional lecturer is a lot easier for a beginner than a static webpage.

Completely agree on this point. Without a good understanding of the language reference documentation won't help, especially with Java docs that are often little more a slightly expanded version of a header file!